Dating scammer elizaveta

The Romanov dynasty lasted 300 years: the lives of its tsars and emperors and empresses is a bejewelled but bloodsplattered chronicle of assassinations, adulteries, tortures, secret marriages, coups, reckless rises and brutal falls.

It is peopled by heroic, brilliant statesmen, soldiers and reformers - as well as nymphomaniacs, martinets, murderers, blunderers, monsters, megalomaniacs and lunatics.

But throughout, Russia's tsars projected their country's greatness in the majestic flamboyance of their clothes, a never-ending parade of ermine, gold and diamonds.

So they dressed up in order to parade their glory and legitimacy before their own restless empire and an often disdainful world.

Tsar Nicholas II with his wife Tsarina Alexandra (standing on the right), the Tsaravitch (2nd from right) and his four daughters Under the Romanovs between 16, Russia was an empire of oppressed nations dominated by one family and a tiny Russian nobility.

Its system was a paranoid, hereditary autocracy which was 'tempered by assassination' as one commentator puts it.

The single Imperial family holding it all together used fashion and pomp to show their might, as well as the army and police to oppress opposition.

It did not matter that the vast wealth on display had been created on the backs of serfs who were sold, starved, beaten and raped.